


Black Powder, Black Hearts

by sundogsailor



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Anal Sex, Dubious Consent, Hand Jobs, Implied Bi!Kylo Ren, Inexperienced Hux, M/M, Minor Character Death, Navy!Hux, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sexual Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 07:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8048080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundogsailor/pseuds/sundogsailor
Summary: “I can’t,” he insisted, playing the one remaining card his panicked brain had managed to find. “It’s against regulations.”“You’re not in his Majesty’s Navy anymore,” Ren growled. “I thought that was abundantly clear.”Hux opened his eyes to find the man much nearer than he’d thought, leaned in close enough for him to pick out each of his dark lashes in the lamplight. And at that moment he knew he’d lost, both the fight against himself and the one against Kylo Ren: mutineer, pirate, and apparently, sodomite.





	Black Powder, Black Hearts

“Thanisson!”

Hux looked up, searching for his Gunner’s Mate, sweat pouring down into his eyes as they strained in the low light of the compartment. He had one foot braced instinctively up against an oaken powder keg as the _HMS Arkanis_ rolled even further to port and back again, setting the double-enclosed lantern to dancing even harder. His thighs burned; he’d been braced like this for coming on an hour now, save for when they’d briefly come about to try to gain the upwind advantage.

Another round of concussive gunfire shook the frigate as they momentarily hit level, Captain Tarkin giving the order to fire whenever they had the angle and the timing. Not that Hux could hear the shouts, down in the powder magazine. His place was amidst the acrid stench of sulfur and saltpeter, packing charges as the rumble of gun carriages quaked dust from the timbers just inches above where he stooped. The place for a bastard son and confirmed bachelor, destined never to rise above the rank of Warrant Officer.

 _“Thanisson!”_ He bellowed again.

“Yes!”

“This keg’s ruined,” he snapped, slamming down the lid of the one he’d just pried open. Water damage, from the sudden storm they’d hit the prior week. “Get me another. _Quickly!”_

The man—a boy still, really—abandoned his own packing station and scrambled to dislodge another keg from where they’d been stowed outboard. The ship shook again, this time from the twenty-four pounder two decks directly above their heads. At their current rate of fire and the speed at which they’d been sending charges out with the powder monkeys, the seventeen they had waiting as buffer should hold for long enough for them to get back on track. He cursed himself. He had thought he’d successfully culled all the useless powder immediately after the squall.

“Mr. Hux!” came a shout from the door, and he turned to see a skinny, dark haired youth panting there. He didn’t know his name. “You’re needed on the gun deck! The port carronade!”

Hux nearly bowled him over as he shot out into the hold and up the ladder, trusting Thanisson to take over the magazine. Whatever the issue it had was bad if his Mate stationed there couldn’t manage it for him. And he knew exactly how disastrously a jam or a misfire could end.

When he emerged onto it, the gun deck was in the throes of functional chaos. Each crew scrambled and shouted to clean and load and run out their gun again as fast as they could, and boys darted amongst them with charges and priming powder. It was unsurprisingly rank and swelteringly hot, stinking of sulfur and straining bodies. He darted aft through it all with steady feet, gimbaling himself flawlessly even at a stoop as they pitched and rolled. When he had almost reached the port quarter he happened to glance out a gunport, only to see the glass-green water beyond it go shadowed and then red, and then they pitched over to starboard and he saw rails and rigging swing into view.

The _Finalizer_. And she was _close._

He saw the command more than he heard it, already half-deaf from the din of the grueling morning that had now crept into afternoon, and stopped to fall into firing position as Lieutenant Mitaka swung his arm down: knees bent, hands clapped over his ears, mouth open to equalize with the pressurized slap of the combustion. Four shots cracked off in perfect unison, a miniature broadside. He couldn’t tell if any hit: he had no vantage or hearing.

And then, all at once, the hull stove in.

Planking exploded to his right and Hux went down with a shout, thrown halfway across the gun deck by the blast and rolling until he came to an abrupt stop. For a moment all that mattered was a blooming pain in his side, demanding his body’s full attention as he sucked in breath. When he regained the presence of mind to look up, however, he blanched. Bodies lay broken about him, one man impaled half-through by an arm-long splinter, burbling blood as the light went out of his eyes. Others simply rested there, faces down. One of them was Datoo, he realized. Red ran over the boards toward him in arrhythmic seeps, moving closer with each pitch and roll.

There was no time to feel grief for his shipmates. Hux groaned and dragged himself up, steadying his weight on the gun he’d slammed into the carriage of. Had he been two paces further, he’d have died.

And then it all happened again.

This time all he knew was the slam of another body into him and the crack of his head on iron, and he was gone.

 

 

Hux rolled, or tried to. Something was wrong. He couldn’t get up. Planks swayed in his vision. Why was it so bright on the gun deck? Gunports weren’t supposed to be that large. And who- who was that? He wasn’t wearing the regulation Navy blues and whites. The flogging he’d get for that was-

Oh.

May the Lord save my soul, he prayed.

The crew of the _Finalizer_ , those thrice damned pirates who they’d been tracking for all these weeks, had _boarded them._

He had to fight, to resist, to hold the ship his fate had been tied to for so many years now. He struggled with renewed vigor to extricate himself from the man lying on top of him, but he was heavyset and already cooling to the touch, and what had to be a massive bruise on Hux’s side hindered his tolerable range of movement.  He fumbled for a weapon, but all he could manage was the rigging knife at his hip.

He suddenly realized, however, that he was the only sailor moving on the gun deck. And in his panic, he’d drawn attention to himself. He should have played dead, he was a _fool_ -

“We missed one!” the man called to someone out of view. He loomed above where Hux slumped as he strode over, a towering, unfashionably short-haired man in a gray silk waistcoat, his voice muted and far away sounding to his still-ringing eardrums. Red slick slid off the rapier he held, casually lax at his side. A thin panic started to rise in Hux’s throat.

“Stay away,” he growled, brandishing the blunt-tipped blade of his knife as steadily as he possibly could. His legs were still trapped under the body, but his current position was better than nothing. Although, admittedly, not by much.

The man took an unworried stride into Hux’s space and simply pushed the knife aside with the tip of his own blade. Hux couldn’t touch him. He was too far, and now he had the edge of a sword horizontal at his throat, swaying slightly as the ship did, forcing his chin up painfully and threatening to open him up like farm stock for the slaughter. It was a lazier intermittent rocking now; they’d probably been hove to.

“You’re the Gunner?” the pirate asked, crouching down. Hux tried to take a slice at him but he merely caught his wrist and crushed it, forcing a cry out of Hux’s throat and the blade to clatter on the planking. “You’ve got the gunner’s tattoo.”

He did: a speckling of bright white scar tissue on the right side of his face, near his eye, evidence of one too many times spent bent low to a gun as the priming powder combusted. But the real giveaway was his blue frock coat, one not allowed to any common sailor. The man removed the rapier from his throat and instead gripped Hux’s jaw with the same hand that held its hilt, tilting his head to get a better look. The hold pulled at his hair, stray locks of it wild and long since lost from his ribbon.

“We could use you. Not many of you made it, this time.”

“Burn in hell,” he snarled, and bit down on the meat between the man’s fingers and thumb as hard as he possibly could.

He snapped back from Hux’s face with a cry of surprise, then anger, and then he was swinging the sword’s pommel down hard into his temple.

Everything went black again.

 

 

They hauled him out onto the weather deck and tossed him down into a huddle of men at the rail near the mainmast, disarmed and seething. All in all there were perhaps only two dozen navy men and marines left to squint into the brutal Caribbean sun, out of a complement of three hundred. Hux grimaced. It had been a rout.

The _Finalizer_ was rafted to the starboard side of the _Arkanis_ , the silhouette of the brig one he’d be hard pressed to forget. They’d first sighted them off Nassau three days ago and made pursuit, Captain Tarkin intent on wiping the ship off the face of the map entirely. She and her crew had been plaguing British trade for months, striking all manner of cargo carriers with brutal abandon, messily but with such intensity that their comparative lack of tactical prowess hadn’t mattered.

“Mr. Hux!” came a hiss, and he realized it was Thanisson. “Thank God you’re alive.”

“Shut up,” he growled. “Don’t draw attention.”

The boy paled and looked away, up at the complement of pirates that surrounded them, many standing guard but others ripping the ship apart. Provisions, charts, the Surgeon’s stores, shot, kegs of powder and fresh water, extra line and sailcloth, and so much more; it all went over to the _Finalizer_. 

“Heads up, boys,” crooned the pirate who’d knocked him out, and Hux squinted apprehensively in the direction he was looking. A figure was descending the ladder from the quarterdeck, black coat, black breeches, long dark hair tied back under a weathered tricorn, glinting rapier sheathed at his hip with an accompanying flintlock. He moved like he was stalking something. When Hux recognized him, in description if not in visage, his mouth went dry.

Kylo Ren. Captain Snoke’s First Mate, the two men’s reputations almost equally feared.

Hux had envisioned someone older, someone far more battle worn, but instead the man’s face was trim and well-formed, marred only by a clean-edged scar slicing from the bridge of his nose over his right cheek and jaw. His shoulders were strong and rounded, his movements those of a fighter. This wasn’t a man who sat back and watched his crew do all the work for him. Hux swallowed thickly. Kylo Ren was terrifyingly enthralling.

“I assume you all know how this goes,” he rumbled, his voice surprisingly smooth, as he came to a halt. “You join our crew or I run you through. You only get one chance to answer. So-”

“His Majesty’s men will never surrender to you!” Hux’s head snapped around at the proclamation, trying to determine which idiot had just committed suicide. It was Lieutenant Mitaka, standing stiff and angry and trembling in defiance.

Ren took a step forward, face twitching into a sneer and head cocked. Mitaka took a shallow breath, opened his mouth again—and then burbled blood, Ren’s saber sliding into his abdomen up to the hilt with a leisurely metallic _shuff_.

He thudded to the deck, and Ren flicked red drops off the tip of the blade. “Anyone else?”

There were some. About half of Hux’s captured shipmates and all of the marines couldn’t stomach turning tail on king and country, joining Mitaka’s body where Snoke’s crew threw them all over the gunwale. The remaining six were shuffled off to the side, watched closely by the pirates, wearing simultaneously ashamed and relieved expressions.

And then it was Hux’s turn.

“Make your choice,” Ren ordered.

Hux just glared. A long, tense, moment passed.

“Is he mute, Phasma?” asked Ren, turning to the blonde pirate.

“No. He cursed me out and bit me, though,” he answered, shaking his head and holding up his hand.

Ren tipped his blade under his chin, forcing Hux’s head even further back. He closed his eyes and choked down a swallow. He didn’t want to die, that was for certain. And after all, what had the navy ever given him besides an escape from his father? Endless lonely years at sea on the _Arkanis_ , piss-poor pay, and no prospects of career advancement simply because of his birth. But he couldn’t betray his loyalties. He’d be a _traitor_. He’d-

“He’s a pretty one, despite the powderstains,” Ren murmured, and Hux’s eyes snapped back open to lock with his. “Well? Decide.”

“Don’t- don’t kill me,” he managed. There was nothing else he could say. “I’ll go with you.”

Ren sheathed his rapier, a bare smirk pulling at his lips, and swung to address his crew. Hux sagged back, against the rail, defeated. “We’re done here. Phasma, get these men aboard and secure what we’ve taken. Snoke won’t like to wait.”

“Of course.”

Ren made to stalk away into the bustle of pirates working around them, but paused mid step. He turned back to face the huddle of navy-men-no-longer and gave Hux a startlingly intense look, singling him out from the rest.

“And bring that one to my quarters,” Ren ordered, his finger jabbing out directly at Hux’s chest. “Send another to fetch his personal effects.”

Wait, _what?_

Phasma grabbed him and hauled him up before he could protest, pushing him past Thanisson and the others towards the netting that had been set up as a makeshift bridge between the two vessels. He nearly stumbled over himself, wincing at the pain in his side, but managed the crossing decently well. Phasma stuck close behind him as they made their way across the deck to what looked like the after hatch, just forward of the helm.

“Why did he ask for me?” Hux demanded, flinching away from the blonde giant’s touch on his upper arm. With them both standing the height difference wasn’t really significant, and it emboldened him.

“I’ve learned not to ask Ren questions,” Phasma growled, and gave him another shove.

“No need to push,” he snapped back.

Phasma just gestured pointedly at the hatch. “Down.”

The _Finalizer_ looked well maintained, but far from immaculate. By her timbers she seemed as though she’d been French at some point, but the design was nothing remarkable. Hux felt a small glimmer of satisfaction as he descended onto the gun deck and dodged around several crewmen vying for the companionway, seeing a decently sized hole punched through the side that complemented the several shattered rails he’d noticed up above. They’d at least landed some shots. Phasma herded him along towards the stern and ushered him into one of the private cabins flanking the wardroom.

“Don’t leave,” he ordered, and shut the door.

Hux exhaled heavily and sank down on the bunk, finally allowing his nerves to show and his hands to tremble. He balled them into fists and let the pressure of his nails steady him.

He was a turncoat, now, no matter by choice or coercion. A criminal. Technically, a _pirate._ But at least he wasn’t dead.

The cabin was spacious, just wide enough for him to stretch out his arms without touching the sides and long enough that it appeared he could lie down relatively comfortably. A small writing desk was lodged to Hux’s right between the bunk and the door, and a sea chest occupied the opposing wall. An enclosed lamp fixture was mounted above it but wasn’t lit, light instead filtering in from three windows set into the hull. The view through them was poor when Hux tried peering out, the glass blurred by clinging salt.

Why in God’s name was he here? He’d have easily accepted a hammock in the berth deck—or the gun deck, should he have to—even though he’d come to appreciate the meager quarters of the Gunner’s cabin on the _Arkanis_. He would wait and try not to let worry eat him, he resolved.

He ended up doing so for hours.

The light turned from suffusively bright to warm and dusky as it filled the cabin, the constant bustling of the ship changing rhythm to a more subdued hum. They started moving and heeled over gently, making it easy for Hux to lean up against the hull and be rocked into it with each bounce and swell. The fact that he’d never see the _Arkanis_ or whatever was left of her ever again slowly sank in, each minute putting unseen miles between them, and each mile a step towards some unknown destination.

He contemplated leaving the cabin several times, but quickly put the idea out of mind. It wouldn’t make a difference. Personal privacy was a scant illusion on the water, and there was nowhere to go. So he stripped off his frock coat, retied his hair, and let exhaustion take him from the clutches of shock and anxiety. He didn’t notice when he fell asleep, lulled down by the slap of rigging and creaking of timbers, orchestrated in unfamiliar rhythms and punctuated by the voices of strangers.

 

 

“Hey.”

Hux groaned. He hadn’t heard seven bells, and nobody was shouting, so who had the audacity to wake him for watch before he absolut-

“ _Hey_.”

He shot awake at the light slap on his cheek, shouting and instinctively batting at whoever it was as he scrambled up. He sat against the hull, heart hammering as Kylo Ren took a step back. The lamplight cast his face into soft relief, all tumbling hair and rakishly uneven jaw, the flame dancing in the reflection of his dark eyes. His sense of time escaped him but he must have slept hard, for Ren to be able to light the lamp and toss his jacket over the desk without waking him.

“What do you want with me?” he demanded, resisting the urge to scoot back further. He would stand his ground.

“So you _are_ Irish,” Ren observed, evading the question. Hux’s mouth set in a hard line at that, prepared to verbally lacerate him should he try to degrade him for his coloring and origin.

Instead, Ren just chuckled. “Don’t worry. We don’t much care where anyone’s from, here.” He crossed his ankles and braced nonchalantly back against the door as they rolled slightly. The seas had laid down significantly in the past hours, and it was probably flat calm now aside from the swells.

“You were Gunner on the _Arkanis_? What’s your name?” he asked, unbuckling his belt and lodging it by the rapier sheath between the chest and the bulkhead. The flintlock came out of his sash next, sending a spike of nerves through Hux until the pirate stowed it in the chest. He eyed the rapier thoughtfully, judging the distance he’d have to lunge to draw it in time, but- no. He couldn’t. The man hadn’t made any threatening moves, and attacking him now, on his own ship, would end horribly. Even if he refused to trust the pack of pirates, they had become his lot. He had to reframe.

“Yes. It’s Hux.” he answered. “And you’re Kylo Ren.”

“You’ve heard of me.” A sparkle came into the man’s eye, who was now divesting himself of his waistcoat, and Hux swallowed dryly. He told himself he was watching intently out of self-preservation, and absolutely nothing else.

“Of course.” Who hadn’t heard of him? Scourge of the Colonies and Britannia alike, a man who accrued legends like some collected scrimshaw, a murderer. And all this without even being the captain of his own ship. “You’re rather… well known in the West Indian fleet.”

“Several of our long guns need repairing,” he stated, in a tone that belied an unfamiliarity with being challenged. “You’ll help with that and organizing the shot and powder we took today. Speak with Captain Snoke tomorrow.”

“Very well,” Hux acquiesced, relieved that he just wanted to talk business, nothing more, nothing less. Though it grated at him, he could accept the replacement of one superior officer with another, after a bloody fashion. “May I go?”

“Why? Do you prefer swinging in a hammock amongst a hundred other men to the comfort of a cabin?” Ren moved to sit in the middle of the bunk, closer to where Hux’s legs rested over the side of it than seemed entirely necessary. He was just in his well-fitted black shirt and breeches now, an inky spot against the dim timbers save for his searching expression, as though he were gauging something.

“But this is _your_ cabin.”

“And?”

Hux felt the lightest touch on the fabric over his knee, and looked to see the man turned towards him and ghosting long fingers over it. He snapped his gaze back up to meet Ren’s, taken aback by the intensity he saw there.

Was he- was he _coming on to him?_

“What are you-“

“I saw how you looked at me on the _Arkanis_. You’re doing it now, too,” he rumbled, and slid his hand up towards his thigh. “Rather bold, for a man whose ship had just been captured.”

Oh, God. He _was_.

Hux jerked the leg away as though burned, eyes wide, and snapped at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you sure?” Ren pushed, and that made Hux _angry_ , finally caught out telling a decades-old lie he’d repeated to himself so many times that it started seeming like the truth. He’d joked and cried about non-existent sweethearts during his time before the mast, gone to the brothels in exotic ports and paid the girls for trying their best with him, he’d _fit in_ , a sailor in the company of other red-blooded, God-fearing countrymen. He felt himself flush, hot and pink, indignation and bare-faced shame drawing out the spitefulness that had carried him through so much of his life.

He snarled. “I’m not some whore for you to just-”

“But you do want this, don’t you?”

“I-“ he stuttered, suddenly stumbling over the idea of just what _this_ referred to, his mind spiraling far beyond what he’d ever allowed himself to consider before. He knew how his and presumably other men’s pricks worked, but how would- what-

The thoughts sent a twitch of want flying to his groin, and he slapped a horrified hand over his mouth. Ren reached out for his leg again and this time Hux didn’t resist him, just squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his head back against the planking as his cheeks burned. 

“You’re trembling.”

“Stop,” he demanded.

The hand paused midway up his thigh. “Why?”

“This is- It would be a mortal sin.”

“So is murder,” Ren countered. “You make your living sinking ships and clearing decks with grapeshot."

“That’s different,” Hux protested weakly. “That’s war.”

“I disagree. Don’t tell me you’ve never enjoyed it.” And Hux couldn’t, not really, he couldn’t deny the satisfaction of a cracking gun or the sensation of being drunk with power the first time he’d joined a boarding party, where he'd slashed a man’s belly open with the rapier held tight in his slender teenaged hands.

Ren’s touch started moving again, sliding up over his trousers to rest at the crook of his thigh. The movement sent traitorous little anticipatory shocks through him and he shifted, trying to clamp his legs shut defensively but only succeeding in making the sensation stronger.

“I can’t,” he insisted, playing the one remaining card his panicked brain had managed to find. “It’s against regulations.”

“You’re not in his Majesty’s Navy anymore,” Ren growled. “I thought that was abundantly clear.”

Hux opened his eyes to find the man much nearer than he’d thought, leaned in close enough for him to pick out each of his dark lashes in the lamplight. And at that moment he knew he’d lost, both the fight against himself and the one against Kylo Ren: mutineer, pirate, and apparently, sodomite.

He let out a trembling breath.

“I’ve never…”

“Then let me show you.”

Ren shifted around to really look at Hux, half-perched on the edge of the bunk and facing outboard at him where he leaned. He switched hands on his thigh, his left now the one to rub gentle circles into it, and brought his right up to Hux’s face. He carefully forced Hux’s hand away from where it worried at his mouth, and then cupped the side of his jaw, pulling him to fully look at those dark eyes and scattered moles. Hux knotted his grip into his shirt, anything to keep his fingers occupied above the waist.

“So handsome,” the man murmured, and for a moment Hux thought with a lurch that he was going to try to kiss him, but he thankfully did not. He just trailed his fingers off the edge of his jaw, leaving it tingling and bereft, and then ran them over the crest of his ear and slowly down the side of his neck.

Hux whimpered.

“Just relax. You like that?” Ren asked, but it wasn’t a question, not really. The scoundrel knew full well that he did, Hux was sure he could feel it in the tremble of his body. Those fingers slipped back to the nape of his neck, digging evenly into the scalp there, and he had to stifle a moan. How long had it been since anyone had touched him like this? Five months? Six? It had to have been just before they’d left dry dock in London, a bit of fully clothed petting after which he’d left the girl well paid and having done nothing substantial.

Each rub of Ren’s fingers bled a fraction of tension out of him, enough to where he let his eyes flicker shut and his hold on his shirt loosened slightly. He felt Ren’s other hand leave his thigh to run up his torso instead, curving around to his back once it reached his ribs. And then there was a touch of lips to his neck.

“What-” Hux’s eyes flew open and he tried to jerk back, but Ren kept him in place. His hair tugged and stung for a moment in the attempt, but Ren quickly loosened his hold and went back to rubbing when Hux acquiesced and stilled. He shuddered. The yank had felt _good_ , flaring the heat in his crotch, making him press against himself. He was starting to get hard, but- but he was a _man_. Wasn’t this… wrong, somehow? This was all already wrong, anyway, but shouldn’t _he_ be the one holding the other person? If they were both men, how did-

“Shh,” the pirate insisted, sensing him tense up again. “Just let me lead.”

Maybe the rumors that Kylo Ren could read a man’s thoughts were true.

Ren kept going, kissing down his neck and across his collarbones until Hux was panting. His hands wandered slowly down to touch Hux’s, gradually working them out of their death grip on the fabric.

“You can touch me too, you know.”

“How?”

“Like you would a woman, if you’d like. It’s not that different.”

Hux slowly reached out to Ren’s chest, feeling the muscles tense and release under the fine fabric, emboldened by the stuttering inertia of what was happening and his own body’s desires. Ren gave a pleased hum, and pressed the heel of his palm against Hux’s crotch.

“Oh, Christ,” he exclaimed, halfway between a groan and a yelp. They hit another large swell and the rocking motion turned the pressure into a delicious grind. He canted his head back, and Ren took the opportunity to nip one last time at his neck before pulling away.

“Take your shirt off and lie down.”

“I won’t have you rip my clothes off. Yours goes too.”

“With pleasure.” Ren pulled the thing off in one smooth motion, tossing it aside, and Hux’s mouth went dry again. There was absolutely nothing soft about the man, his sun-darkened torso and arms littered with pale scars, the one from his face continuing across his shoulder. The view was the most pleasing thing Hux had seen in a long, long time, especially because this time he was managing to admit to himself that _yes_ , he did like it. He liked it a lot. His body _yearned_.

“Go on,” the man prodded, and so Hux tugged himself awkwardly out of his shirt as well. He knew that while he was strong due to the nature of his occupation, he was still slimmer than most, small in the shoulder and hip. But the look in Ren’s eye, when he caught it, was pure hunger. He pushed Hux down on the bunk in one smooth movement, sliding him sideways until there was nothing to catch him but its mattress.

“Wait,” he panted, searching up at Ren where he leaned over him, a hand splayed across Hux's chest and his face half obscured by the shadow of his hair in the lamplight. There was barely enough space for the two of them.

“What?”

“Do you have to be… on top?”

“Would you know what you were doing if we switched?” he asked, and Hux snapped his mouth shut. “You can try next time.”

Wait, he wanted there to be a _next time?_ Hux’s thoughts stuttered to a halt, everything pressing back in on him. They barely knew each other, Ren had killed most of his shipmates and effectively coerced him into joining the most hated pirate crew this side of the Atlantic, singled him out, somehow talked him into debauched sex, and was already planning a _next time_? Absolutely not.

Although, to be fair, some sick, traitorous part of him was honestly okay with the idea.

That part only got stronger when the pirate ran a broad stroke down his chest, all the way from the dip of his throat to the fine hairs trailing down into his trousers, brushing a nipple on the way and making him gasp. He wanted to wriggle away but he couldn’t, trapped by the sensations and Ren’s weight settling over one thigh. And then he traced lower, palming Hux’s erection again before slipping a finger under his waistband and popping the first button.

Hux groaned and looked away, throwing his arm over his eyes. He couldn’t look. One by one the buttons went until Ren pushed the fabric down and a flash of air hit his prick, sending goosebumps dancing all up and down his sides. There was a clattering and shifting of weight, what sounded like Ren searching for something, and then he bore back down on him, one arm supporting his weight by Hux’s side, his breath hot and close by his face.

“Relax,” the man soothed, doing absolutely nothing for Hux’s nerves. And then Ren was gripping him and _stroking_ , something that felt like oil slicking the motion.

Oh, it felt _good_. Far better than it had ever been on the few occasions when Hux had caved to shameful, private need and tried it on his own. He choked back a gasp as he felt himself hardening even more, almost to the point of aching, and gave a few involuntary bucks, the hand he wasn’t blinding himself with finding purchase on Ren’s shoulder. He wasn’t going to last long like this. He wasn’t young anymore.

“You like that, don’t you,” Ren crooned, his weight lifting up again and the arm disappearing from Hux’s side, Hux's touch falling to the man’s hip. He bit his lip, trying desperately to staunch the indecent noises slipping from his mouth. What if a neighboring cabin heard? What if there was someone in the wardroom? They’d all know that he was- was what? Everything shameful and wrong he’d tried to suppress his whole life?

Ren’s breathing started growing ragged too for some reason as the man shifted about more, and Hux could feel himself getting close, so close, his bucking slipping into the erratic. And then all of a sudden Ren let go of his prick, squeezing restrictively just behind his balls instead.

“Bloody _hell,_ ” Hux growled, robbed of release by the hold, indignant enough to push himself half up on an elbow and glare. He tried to pull Ren’s hand off but was slapped wetly away, and he was just about ready to fight the man. It _hurt_ , his body stuck in the midst of confusing pleasure-pain. He needed to-

“I’m going to make it even better for you,” Ren rumbled. The look in his eyes was predatory, and Hux swallowed apprehensively. What could possibly feel better than what they’d been doing? The man shifted upwards until he was balancing right over his hips, reached down to gently move the tip of his prick with another slippery hand, and suddenly it clicked. He couldn’t mean-

Ren sank down onto his length and Hux shouted, palms slamming into the bulkhead at the top of the bunk. It felt _spectacular,_ so much better than when he’d tried with women. Ren kept one hand locked around his base but let the other fall onto Hux’s chest again for support. Nothing was processing except the drag and the heat and the clench and the _need,_ and he couldn’t keep his whimpers contained anymore.

And then Ren let go of his prick and he was gone, the world whiting out as he came. He vaguely heard the other man groan and registered the sensation of something hot hitting his belly, but was too blissed out to care.

When he did come back to his senses, it wasn’t pleasant.

Ren perched at the end of the bunk just past Hux’s toes, one leg folded up beneath him as he leaned nonchalantly against the hull with an elbow in the window frame. His breeches were back on but he remained half clothed and mussed looking in the flickering flame light, watching his bedmate closely. Hux hauled himself up and tucked himself hastily away, grimacing at the spunk on his chest. He dared to touch it to try to wipe it away but immediately regretted the decision.

“Here,” Ren said, tossing him a rag. It cleaned up most of the filth, but he still felt dirty. Hux threw it uncaringly back at him and cast about for his shirt, tugging it hastily back on and standing to grab his frock coat out from under Ren’s.

“Wait,” the pirate called, snagging his shirttail.

 _“Don’t touch me_ ,” Hux snarled, tugging away. Without the haze of arousal, he couldn’t quite process what he’d just done. What he’d let happen. All he knew was that his conscious, right-thinking mind was screaming _this was a mistake and you knew it_.

“You wanted this,” Ren rumbled. He- he couldn’t argue _no_ to that, could he? But at the same time, he didn’t think it was entirely true.

“I will ruin you if you tell even a single soul,” he snapped back. The man just laughed. He hated it.

“Everyone probably knows already.”

“What?”

“You weren’t exactly quiet.”

He cursed, feeling heat rush to his cheeks again.

“You could rest here, you know.”

“I think not.” Absolutely, unquestionably, not an option. This was Kylo bloody _Ren_. The- the _sex_ had been one thing, but had they been anywhere else besides the _Finalizer_ , Hux would have already tried to kill him. Extenuating circumstances.

Everything about Ren went iron-hard for a moment at his refusal, and Hux’s heart jumped up into his throat. It seemed as though he might clamp a hand around his arm and drag him back, very much against his will. But then the darkness passed, his face cleared, and he cocked his head instead. “Very well. Phasma should know where your chest is. She’s on deck, if you go looking.”

 _“She?_ That brute is a _woman?”_

Ren smirked again, smug. “You didn’t notice?”

“No. I was too busy fighting off _pirates_ ,” he snarled, and yanked open the door. The slam of it as he left wasn’t half as satisfying as it should have been. He stomped his way out of the wardroom and up the ladder, making sure Ren heard he hadn't lingered.

It was warm on deck, with a clear full-moon sky and a gentle breeze. They were making slow way with the wind on their quarter, the squares braced two points over and the spanker sheeted out. He found an empty stretch of rail just beyond the hatch and leaned heavily on it, letting the wind play with his unkempt hair before shaking it out and re-tying it again. Those working the on watch ignored him save for for a few long looks, moving about their tasks with quiet whispers of conversation.

The thought of Kylo Ren and his languid smirk made him shiver, far more than the weather alone would’ve warranted. He got the sense that the man had no intentions of letting him be, not after this.

He would figure it out. He could jump ship the next time they made landfall and hope to find his way back to some other British vessel, but it was risky. There was no guarantee they’d accept him back, and they might be just as likely to lock him up and court martial him for desertion. The other alternative would be to stay here and tough it out. He was good at that. And at least aboard the _Finalizer_ he wouldn’t be constrained by his birth: it could be a clean slate, If he wanted it to be.

Besides, that traitorous part of him that had truly _enjoyed_ the act he’d just committed still lingered, a glowing ember in the pit of his stomach that threatened to burst back into flame.

He pushed off the rail and turned to the quarterdeck. He had to find his chest and a hammock. As for the rest?

Time would tell.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Now that I've got this out of my system, maybe I can actually work on the _other_ fics I've been needing to. Thinking about this AU has utterly consumed me. My experience with ships is far more practical than historical research based and I'm less knowledgeable about the 1720s than later periods, so please excuse any gross inaccuracies. It's fanfic, not Patrick o' Brien.
> 
> Hit me up for nautical explanations and general kylux trash on tumblr (@[sundogsailor](sundogsailor.tumblr.com) )


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